Tropical Flair

Chef's New Restaurant Features Flavors Of The Islands

March 09, 1989|By PRUE SALASKY Staff Writer

Monroe Duncan, a chef whose work has ebbed and flowed in restaurants around Norfolk's Ocean View has re-emerged - larger than life, a little bit tired but creative as ever. His latest venture (which opened Jan. 13) is The Lazy Lobster, in the Holiday Inn at Willoughby Spit. The restaurant's logo depicts a jaunty crustacean propped under a parasol, too indolent to move from a pot in which its fate is sealed.

Such wry humor, a flair for the absurd, a delight in different foods and innovative applications have marked all of Duncan's restaurants. A Norfolk native, he was schooled in hotel restaurants up and down the East Coast and in Chicago, starting here in 1961 with classical French cooking and the formal tableside service associated with it at the now-defunct Nations Room in the Holiday Inn-Waterside in Norfolk. At the time such elegance was new to area dining.

Each move since has put him just ahead of the pack - from his penchant for the lighter French style known as nouvelle cuisine to the Cajun rage to his present foray into Caribbean and Floridian cooking. "I'm told it's up and coming," the 48-year-old chef says. "People are always looking for something different." Duncan is a master at providing that.

His first stab at proprietorship came in 1977 with Simply Divine Dahlings on the Hague in Norfolk, where he and partner Bobby Gordon, now of Simply Divine on Granby Street, attracted a ritzy crowd to the tiny neighborhood eatery. Part of the draw was the open kitchen where Duncan reveled in cooking before an audience.

Two years later he carried the concept and his culinary showmanship to more upscale surroundings at Suddenly Last Summer, now the home of Michelangelo's in Ocean View. There he rode the nouvelle wave and introduced the pastas that have become his trademark (such as angel hair with tomatoes, crabmeat and fresh basil, and linguine with seafood and garlicky tomato sauce), that since then have found their way on to virtually every menu in town.

A spin-off business, Club Pink Flamingo, around the corner in the basement of the Pinecrest Hotel (and since occupied successfully by Crusoe's Cellar), had Duncan overextended. Needing to retrench, he sold both restaurants and took a job as food and beverage director at the Chamberlin Hotel in Hampton.

After recouping his energies there, Duncan launched into a short-lived effort, Monroe's Mocambo, on the oceanfront at Virginia Beach. He then helped fine tune the Cajun menu featured at Chappell's in Norfolk where he still is a consultant.

So here he is: back in Ocean View, overflowing in a flowered shirt, creating an island vacation theme with a menu to match. Conch chowder, stone crabs and spiny lobsters all are there, flown in direct from points south. Then there are black beans and rice and yam cakes made from white yams. Flying fish are listed, though Duncan admits he hasn't been able to get any of the Barbadian fish to land here yet. Homemade plantain chips come with the meals.

Altogether The Lazy Lobster's menu represents an evolution rather than a break from Duncan's past styles. He doesn't find any clash between the principles of his Paul Bocuse-inspired nouvelle cuisine background and using the products indigenous to Florida and the islands. The theme allows him to offer a hodge-podge of Spanish, Bahamian, Creole and French-inspired dishes and an opportunity to use different, distinctive regional tastes.

For example, he says, the cooking in Martinique is very French: "They braise local fruits, chilis and celeries and dump them into French sauces."

His popular Flounder Bercy (a French dish made with white wine and shallots) remains on the menu though his best seller has been the fried plantains stuffed with spicy ground sirloin. He has expanded his repertoire to include the use of plantains and green and red bananas.

With typical resourcefulness, he finds different items like pigeon peas at a neighborhood Filipino store rather than through his usual suppliers. His dessert chef, Patrick Reed, who worked with Duncan at Mocambo's, also has adapted his expertise. He now incorporates lots of tropical fruits into his concoctions, such as coconut pineapple cake and coconut pineapple sorbet.

The tropical theme carries to the decor, more understated than former Duncan locations, but still light and upbeat. There are pink linens, fresh flowers and practical, bright oilskin cloths on the tables. A pair of pink flamingoes, a Duncan signature, lurks in the greenery.

Even the bearded Duncan, back to gargantuan proportions after a brief fling with the Optifast diet program, seems more subdued. "I get excited planning it all, and then I get tired."

But that doesn't stop him from constant schemings about food. Right now he's working with Donning publishers in the hopes of getting his own cookbook published. It's a collection of columns and recipes he wrote for Port Folio magazine, a job he expects to resume shortly.